As mentioned last month the revenue from the site has been disappointing of late.

I am taking several steps to address this, one of which is looking into changing the advertising on the site.

To this end I am planning to trial a new ad format on the site in the coming weeks.

I’m always at pains to strike a balance between ads that aren’t excessively intrusive or obstructive for users, but also give advertisers the exposure they’re looking for and are worth purchasing. Naturally, I’m keen to get feedback from users on the new ads.

The trial will be limited to certain areas of the site and the ads will only be shown to visitors from the UK.

I will give further details of the nature of the ads once the campaign has gone live.

As ever if you have any problems with ads on the site please report them via this link including as much information as possible:

I tolerated the ads as long as I could, but eventually all the video ads with sound on drove me to adding this site to my adblock list. If the new system works well, I might turn it off again, but we’ll see.

I’ve never seen any unusual ads apart from the occasional “CONGRATULATIONS!!!!111one!!!11 YOU’VE WON 10 iPODS!” flashy one, but I haven’t seen that in quite a while. Normally I just have advertisements for banks which are pretty easy to ignore.

The first time they showed up I did report it. Then they went away. Then they came back, then they left, then they came back again. That’s when I felt I had served my time (this was the only site I wasn’t using a blocker on) and put up the adblocker.

Also, insinuating people are criminals because they are not inclined to put up with intrusive ads on a website is quite a stretch in my opinion. To each their own, I guess.

@xbx-117 It is and has always been my policy to prevent intrusive ads on the site. That means no auto-playing sound, no auto-expanding ad units, not large format ads that can’t be closed immediately. The ad suppliers know this and if any get through they have to be removed.

Obviously I acted on your initial report and removed the ad in question. So why didn’t you let me know when it happened a second time?

I need to earn money from this site in order to keep it going. If people like you use adblockers, I can’t do that, which means I can’t afford to keep the site going.

I’m not making this up, this is exactly what I wrote about last month:

I’ve turned off my adblocker and my tracking bug blocker for this site because you asked, and because I do love this website. Also, I will endeavor to inform you when I notice intrusive ads more often.

I’ll give it another chance, but bear in mind I do not appreciate being called a thief. I understand your dilemma, and sympathize, but insinuations like that do you no favors.